Adding a Business Travel Card
Continia Sustainability Environmental Accounts include a default emission source for Business Travel feature, enabling companies to effectively report and monitor greenhouse gas emissions associated with traveling for business purposes. Within this Environmental Account, users can meticulously track and calculate emissions related to business travel activities, including transportation methods (not owned by the reporting company) and accommodation choices.
Scope
These travel-related emissions contribute to overall emissions categorized under Scope 3, Category 6 – Business Travel.
To gather the data
When assessing emissions related to business travel, it is vital to collect comprehensive data. It is best practice to gather relevant metrics such as the distance traveled and the mode of transportation used, including air, road, rail, or sea, along with a specification of the class traveled in, such as business or economy. When it comes to travel expenses, it is crucial to collect physical data instead of just monetary information. While monetary data is still acceptable if no physical data is available, expenses such as airplane or train tickets, hotel stays, and others are affected not only by inflation and currency but also by seasonality and events.
You can access this information in collaboration with travel management companies, booking platforms, or expense management systems.
Note
It's common to forget to specify if airplane, train, or boat tickets are for round-trip journeys. It is very important to accurately consider the distance, especially when it comes to return trips while posting entries in the journals.
To add a business travel card
Once you've established protocols for gathering data to track emissions from business travel, you can integrate business travel cards. These cards offer flexibility in categorizing travel activities with the desired granularity. For instance, you can create broad categories encompassing all emissions related to different types of business trips (air, rail, road, sea) or you can delve into specific travel parameters such as distance traveled, class, and accommodation type.
Providing detailed information through business travel cards facilitates a comprehensive assessment and enables proactive measures to optimize travel patterns, choose more sustainable transportation options, and reduce travel overall when not strictly necessary.
To add a business travel card:
Use the
icon, search Business travel, and select the related link.On the action bar, select New.
On the Business Travel card, you can now enter information for, for example, the account type and the Emission Factor Set that you want to connect your data to.
On the General FastTab, make sure to select the type of travel in the Type field.
Tip
Once in use, the card also shows you the total accumulated carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions balance, the last data modified, and so on. For more information on how to fill out these fields, refer to The Fields on the Environmental Account Card article.
On the Emission Factors FastTab, select the Emission Factor set that you want to use.
After adding the relevant categories of business travel, the main page will provide an overview of the types and emissions balance, among other details. This page can be particularly useful for analyzing how various item types or suppliers impact your company’s footprint and help you better manage each of them.